As floodwaters rose in Texas, camp counselors hoisted children onto rafters, carried them to dry ground and sang with them to keep them calm.

When tragedies are in the news — natural disasters, plane crashes, fires — parents naturally and unavoidably react by thinking about what might happen to their own children. And children worry in turn about what might happen to them.

At least 27 died in one of the worst disasters ever for summer camps. The tragedy shines a spotlight on America's camps and whether they're safe.

One local summer camp in the path of the disastrous flooding in central Texas was able to avoid any loss of life by closely monitoring weather reports.

Lucy had been asleep Thursday night in her bunk at Camp Mystic, a roughly 750-person summer camp in Hunt. Rain had begun to pound an area known to be at severe risk of flash floods. On “Here’s the Scoop,” podcast co-host Morgan Chesky takes listeners on the ground to hear from survivors of Texas’ catastrophic flooding.

Generations of the same family have operated the summer camp since 1939. It counts family members of former president and governors as alumnae.

The American Camp Association advises parents to ask camps about their safety plans, including severe weather protocols and relationships with local emergency services. Some camps, even those far from danger,

Summer camp in the flood-prone Hill Country has long been a rite of passage for young people from Texas and beyond.

Richard "Dick" Eastland, the owner of Camp Mystic, the girls' camp on the Guadalupe River which was hit by flooding in Texas on the Fourth of July — killing some of the campers and leaving others miss

As the floodwaters recede from Camp Mystic, a torrent of grief remains for the families of the children who died and those who went missing when flash floods tore through central Texas earlier this week.